


Standard Debriefing

by YvannaIrie



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Comfort No Hurt, Domesticity, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:40:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25304668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YvannaIrie/pseuds/YvannaIrie
Summary: In the event of a large-scale disaster, all government staff in the city of Iacon are put on call.The morning after a major industrial accident, Wheeljack and Bulkhead take stock.
Relationships: Bulkhead/Wheeljack
Comments: 7
Kudos: 28





	Standard Debriefing

Wheeljack’s everything hurt.

Which was _ridiculous_ , right? He’d survived counter-Wrecker carpet bombings by Decepticons, he’d raced through many an ambush by some grudge-carrying snipers without so much as a whisper of supporting fire, he’d nearly dove into three different smelting pools on two different planets, he’d wrestled with a fragging Predacon – by all accounts this shouldn’t even have been on his radar.

This should have been _nothing_. No civil emergency should, at this point, be a candidate for primacy on a scale of things-it-was-worth-feeling-sorry-for-yourself-for, right?

And yet here he was, sprawled in berth in a swirling ache of overtaxed systems, empty fuel tanks and coolant reserves, scraped and dirty and somehow still exhausted after who knows how many hours of recharge. Apparently dismissing a night of wading through scrap and oil and medical waste with a few structural integrity warnings was now asking too much of him, so his prize for being a good little civil servant at the beck and call of the emergency services was indistinct malaise with a side order of lingering nervous tension. They’d just been doing clean-up, trying to dam the flood from the ruptured mineral oil tanks before anyone else got swept away, the only real injury he could claim after a whole two solar cycles was some scuff marks on his spoilers from being yanked down from the scaffolding and shoved out of the way of whoever they’d roused to take over.

He’d driven back home in a daze just as the planet had turned enough for the first rays of sunrise to creep over the horizon, crawled to berth and under Bulkhead’s arm, and fallen into relieved recharge with a thud he could now feel just about everywhere, and had apparently still slept like scrap.

It was ridiculous. This was ridiculous. He was above getting knocked out by something like this, right?

Wheeljack rolled on his back, snarling mostly to himself and blinking through the haze of low-level alarms that popped up to squint into the gloom of their habitat. Their small crammed mess of a home was blissfully quiet and welcomingly dim, the shutters over their city-pointed windows down even though they definitely were crawling their way towards the next evening already. Thank the Allspark for the little blessings. The world was filled with enough knife-edged static as it was.

After a few moments of fruitlessly trying to wiggle into a position where nothing ached, Wheeljack found himself with his helm lolling off the edge of the berth. He could probably justify not getting up, he reasoned as he raised a servo to rub his face – and apparently track soot and welding flux over it, wonderful, he should have taken a detour by the wash after all – he was an entrepreneur, dammit, if he wanted to sleep until the sun came up the next _day_ he could very well fragging do so. He could chalk it up as scheduled maintenance or whatever.

He hazarded another look at his servos, confirming that they were, indeed, covered in grime, as was presumably the entire rest of him. Great. Excellent. Just what he needed. Hopefully Bulkhead had gotten home in a less of a state – there would be no salvaging the sheets if he hadn’t.

Where was the big guy, anyway?

On cue, the shadow on the far wall moved, and Wheeljack dropped his servo on his chest, blinking up just in time to see Bulkhead walk back in. Well, _walk_ was generous – his steps had a strange, lopsided rhythm to them, noticeable even through Wheeljack’s general bleariness, and he was equal parts avoiding the furniture as he was stopping to lean on it for balance. He was looking over a datapad with a decanter of fuel in his other servo, optics jumping rows on whatever he was reading, and generally looking far too good and far too on the other side of the room for how early it was.

Wheeljack frowned, as Bulkhead settled to lean against the drawing table.

After a good few minutes of frowning and Bulkhead continuing to read, obliviously, Wheeljack made to sit up. Immediately, something in his shoulder pulled, then seized, making him drop his helm back with a noise that was barely more than a pained squeak.

He lay there for a long moment, digits trying to unsuccessfully find and unkink the pulled cord, and Wheeljack himself trying to convince himself all over to not feel sorry for himself, before cracking an optic open to see that at least the commotion had gotten Bulkhead to look up from his pad. Not that that helped, with him still on the wrong side of the room, no matter how comfortable-looking and smiling he might have been.

”Good morning.”

“ _No._ ” Still firmly upside down, Wheeljack waved a servo towards Bulkhead, because apparently he wasn’t going a move to come over without some kind of an encouragement. “Frag the morning. Come back to bed.”

Bulkhead snorted, lowering the datapad, but at least he started making his way towards the berth, balancing himself on the couch to make good pace without putting weight on his right. Light glinted off the scores on his forearms where paint had been stripped clean off the armour.

No dirt or grime in sight, though, although even dazed and exhausted Wheeljack was certain Bulkhead had been home already when he’d pulled in. That didn’t bode well for him sharing any responsibility all the damn muck tracked about the place.

“You know we’re technically still on call, right?”

Wheeljack could only grumble when the berth dipped where Bulkhead sat down with a grunt, and despite the general protest his frame was putting up, Wheeljack managed to wiggle himself around to flopping his arm over Bulkhead’s lap, mashing his face into his thigh with vigour. He smelled of oil and steel and something that could only be described as _clean_ , which _definitely_ meant _one_ of them had been smart enough to pass by the wash on the way home. Dammit.

“Don’t care. _Everyone_ is on call.” He punctuated his words by rubbing his helm more firmly against the vaguely-clean armour in some sort of protest for something. “Chief can _try_ , but if he starts picking on us right now, I’m cramming my resignation up his exhaust.”

Bulkhead snorted with laughter. “Aw, don’t be like that.” His free hand moved to pet the back of Wheeljack’s helmet, and from the corner of his optic, Wheeljack watched him bring up the Energon decanter, a rotten burn in his own tanks.

His self-repair apparently wasn’t done coming online, but instead of thinking about that, Wheeljack reached his hand over Bulkhead’s lap, patting at his other thigh in what he hoped was an inquisitive manner.

“You alright?”

“Just fine, Jackie.”

“How’s the knee?”

“Don’t know yet. Didn’t wait for the on-call medic.” Bulkhead’s servo was nice and cool across the back of Wheeljack’s neck, an excellent heat sink for him to fixate on as he argued his own systems back into dormancy. Politely, he held the decanter in Wheeljack’s field of view, and then put it aside when Wheeljack summoned the energy to make a queasy noise.

“You shoulda gone to First Aid”, Wheeljack mumbled, still patting said knee vacantly. “Get it checked out.” His grumbling bubbled into a whine when Bulkhead’s leg shifted, jostling his whole upper body. For a single awful moment he thought Bulk might actually get up and deprive him of an actually comfortable berth, but Bulkhead just brought his arms up over his helm and stretched, trying to keep himself from balancing over.

“Eh, he would have just thrown a fit again”, Bulkhead grumbled, before grunting and bringing his hands back down, and thankfully putting them right back on Wheeljack, this time moving his petting down to his spoilers. “I just wanted to get home and get some sleep.”

Bulkhead nudged Wheeljack’s servo off his knee with his elbow, and braced himself against his other servo with a thoughtful look.

 _Uncomfortably_ thoughtful. Wheeljack blinked up at him, considering if ducking his face back against the very comfortable leg under his arm would solve the problem, but Bulkhead still had his hands on the edge of his spoiler and it made everything kind of muzzy with pleasant feedback, which definitely made settling on a solution harder. His helm was still half-full with warnings for things he was already entirely aware of, thank you.

He could feel the tenseness where Bulkhead’s thumb was stroking over his shoulder.

“You okay, too?”

He glowered at the question, mostly without meaning to. “You know, I wasn’t actually the one under that thing when it fell.”

“Nobody was under that thing when it fell”, Bulkhead said, somewhat exasperated. “Anyone who was wouldn’t even be good for spare parts anymore.”

Wheeljack’s processor jumped from nagging about his empty reservoirs to visualising Bulkhead’s words in detail. No.

No, no, no.

“Thanks, sweetspark”, Wheeljack sneered, picking his servo out from where it had been just fine hanging off of Bulkhead’s lap to rub at his optics. “That’s good to hear, really puts my spark to rest.”

There was a time and place for catastrophising. His own damn berth, drained and tired out of his mind was definitely not it. Wheeljack would much rather spare getting freaked out over nothing for when he was awake enough to actually process it, not right there and right now with when half his faculties were still playing catch-up. The hardware errors were suddenly all eclipsed by tacdata, simulations, dominated by some very detailed and entirely unnecessary worst-case projections he’d _somehow_ ended up running all evening despite being informed right after arriving that Bulkhead was. _Fine._

 _No,_ thank you. Wheeljack would rather go back to the haze of injury, he was already tired of this.

He distantly felt Bulkhead pluck his servo off his face, which made Wheeljack remember how absolutely filthy he was, so good call, probably – rubbing dirt into his own optics would not make him feel better right now. Wheeljack somewhat managed to roll over to stop his elbow from jamming up into an odd angle, as Bulkhead studied the servo and the arm it was attached to with a sympathetic look, damn him.

His other servo came up to brush the general grime off of Wheeljack’s finials, and Wheeljack threw a what he hoped was a “don’t you dare pity me” glare up in Bulkhead’s general direction, because it was plenty enough one of them was feeling sorry for him, Wheeljack didn’t really need any help with that, not after running himself ragged after getting anxious about _nothing_ , but the effort just made his processor complain so he closed his eyes instead, submitting to the fussing.

Bulkhead, unfazed, was still giving him an once-over by the time Wheeljack cracked one optic open to be sure everything was still in focus. He’d pulled back and sat up mostly straight, holding a darkened corner of the blanket in his hands which he was now wiping his servos on.

The look of genuine sympathy that hadn’t gone anywhere would have probably been more upsetting if Wheeljack didn’t already feel about as bad as he could.

“Look at you”, Bulkhead tutted at him. “You look like a mess.”

Wheeljack genuinely didn’t care. Regardless of that, when Bulkhead cupped his cheek with his now mostly-clean hands, he leaned into it.

“You know, by all rights I should drag you to the wash racks, make you clean up so I don’t have to do it a third time.”

“I’ll kick your aft”, Wheeljack managed to mutter.

“Oh, I’m so scared”, Bulkhead shot back, and Wheeljack resented him for being awake enough to be that sarcastic. “I bet you wouldn’t even fight back if I kicked you outta bed right now.”

He was gently pushing Wheeljack over onto his back, in a move pretty much the direct opposite of his playful threatening, and Wheeljack, for his part, was happy to go. He wiggled his other arm from where it had been digging into the mattress under his frame, and after confirming that it was, indeed, black with soot, he reached up to pat Bulkhead on the cheek, leaving a satisfyingly big black print on his face in the process.

Wheeljack pat the print again, earning a mildly disgusted grimace from Bulkhead. Wheeljack watched his face scrunch up, and snickered.

“Try me.”

To Bulkhead’s credit, he managed to pout for a whole two-three seconds, before Wheeljack’s entirely self-satisfied grinning got to him. The unimpressed, somber expression broke into a wholly delightful smile, and Bulkhead ducked his head towards Wheeljack’s absolutely disgusting servo, closing his optics for a while.

Thankfully, Wheeljack’s whole stupid error queue went quiet for a while to let him bask.

After a moment, after Wheeljack had gotten good and comfortable melting into the berth again, Bulkhead opened his optics. He looked down at his own servos, and then back up at Wheeljack in assessment.

“Alright”, Bulkhead declared, for reasons Wheeljack couldn’t follow along, “c’mere.”

“Whu?” Wheeljack managed, before the world abruptly tilted again. His question turned into another thoroughly unintentional squeak, as Bulkhead’s servos hooked under his arms, and pulled him up to Bulkhead’s chest, before falling backwards back onto the berth. The whole two-hundred and seventy degree flip sent Wheeljack’s processor spinning inside his helm, while Bulkhead rearranged them, nudging Wheeljack’s leaden limbs into a comfortable sprawl.

“There”, Bulkhead rumbled beneath him, a warm and exceedingly pleased sound, and while that was definitely awesome, the uncooperative flood of sensory data was stopping Wheeljack from really enjoying it. “Much better.”

“Ugh”, Wheeljack managed.

“Be gentle, you jerk”, he tried again in a moment, after his servos had slipped down off Bulkhead’s arms onto the mattress. Bulkhead had in the meanwhile folded one arm behind his helm, and wasn’t even particularly holding Wheeljack in place. Wheeljack didn’t trust himself to have the coordination to try to get up, so that part at least worked out.

“Yeah, yeah, your back will thank me for not sleeping on it wrong again.”

“You gotta say it like that?” Wheeljack slurred out, and even half asleep he knew what the sound of his own whining was like. “You make me feel old.”

Bulkhead snickered. “Go back to sleep, Jackie.”

The servo Bulkhead had hooked under Wheeljack’s arm went back gently petting his side, and suddenly, Wheeljack genuinely didn’t have the energy to argue back. He pulled his own arm up, propping his servo under his cheek, and closed his optics, frame falling loose as he got comfortable.

By the time Bulkhead reached for his datapad to prop it on Wheeljack’s shoulder, he was out like a light.


End file.
